Bill Belichick: ‘Don’t win a war digging a foxhole’

FOXBORO — Echoing what his Pro Bowl quarterback said an hour earlier, Patriots coach Bill Belichick said he doesn’t expect his team to get conservative with the playoffs beginning for his team on Sunday against the Texans. If anything, Belichick insisted, the Patriots will become more aggressive.

“You don’t win a war by digging a foxhole and sitting in it,” Belichick said. “You’ve got to go out there and attack, you’ve got to make the plays that you need to make to win. It’s a one game season.” With the playoffs upon them, the Patriots understand that their season will be on the brink every time they take the field. It’s win or go home. There is no more banking on next week to sort through mistakes.

“We all understand that. Every player, every coach, everybody that participates in the game. We all understand exactly what it is.”

The other thing Belichick made perfectly clear is that he is not expecting a repeat of the 42-14 walkover against the Texans on Dec. 10 at Gillette Stadium.

“I think it’s about creating a game plan that you feel can be successful against a team you’re playing. The way certain plays matched up in the first game, first of all I don’t even know if we’re going to run the same plays or they’re going to run the same plays so that it could even possibly match up in this game. But even if it did, the chances for it to matched up, the number of plays we run and the number of defenses they have, for it to be the exact same, is infinitesimal. It’s not going to happen.

“I don’t think that’s really important. It’s about being prepared to deal with whatever it is we have to deal with on Sunday and going out there and executing it well. It’s not trying to replicate a match-up. You can’t do it.”